Lidice massacre

The Lidice massacre occurred on 10 June 1942 when a force of German Ordnungspolizei (Orpo) and Sicherheitsdienst (SD) policemen under Horst Boehme carried out a harsh reprisal attack against the Czech village of Lidice in response to Operation Anthropoid, the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, by the Czechoslovak REsistance. Karl Hermann Frank, Heydrich's deputy, immediately threatened reprisals unless the assassins were found. Frank decided that Lidice should be punished for allegedly harboring the assassins; the assassins had never even been to the village. Adolf Hitler ordered for the mining village to be wiped from the face of the earth, and SS troops surrounded Lidice at 2:00 AM on 10 June 1942. They had the villagers woken and driven to the main square, with the men being separated from the women and children. All men above the age of 15 were executed by firing squad in the farm of the Horak family, while the women and children deposited their valuables at the schoolhouse before being sent to concentration camps. 197 men were killed, and the women and children were deported. On 12 June 1942, the village was bulldozed, and it took volunteers almost a year to raze it completely in one of the most infamous acts of Nazi brutality.